Women’s access to contraceptive methods

(Updated: 2020-06-04)

This presents women’s access to a set of contraceptive methods at SDPs that serve her community.

  • A set of five methods: IUD, implants, injectables, pills, and male condom.

  • SDPs serving a community: any SDPs (public and private) that are located in the community (i.e., EA), or any public SDPs that are designated to serve the community.

  • Four definitions of methods availability (the higher number, the darker shades in figures):
    1. All five methods currently available
    2. All five methods currently available + no stock out in the past 3 months for any of the five methods
    3. All five methods currently available + SDP is ready to insert and remove IUD and Implants
    4. All five methods currently available + no stock out in the past 3 months for any of the five methods + SDP is “ready” to insert and remove IUD and Implants
  • Orange bars/lines: percent of SDPs with the methods.
  • Blue bars/lines: percent of women who has geographic/administrative access to SDPs with the methods.

See Annexes for more info on the background and methods.


1. Latest level

See x-axis for the survey year.

Interpretation example: In Kenya PMA 2018,
* 44% of all SDPs surveyed had the five methods currently in stock.
* But, 29% had the five methods currently available, without 3-month stockout, and ready to provide them.
* Meanwhile, at the population level, 86% of women lived in a community that was served by at least one SDP with the five methods in stock.
* 73% of women live in a community that was served by at least one SDP that had the five methods currently available, without 3-month stockout, and ready to provide them.

(NOTE: Population-level estimates are higher, because as long as the community is served by at least one SDPs with the methods - out of roughly 3+ SDPs that are linked to the community - women are considered having access.)

3. Latest pattern by SES (only for population-based access)

Across countries, population-level access to methods does not have a common pattern with background SES, unlike other access metrics (e.g., cognitive).

  • Often there is no significant difference.
  • There is a negative association (e.g., Uganda), potentially because of: more programming in disadvantaged areas, supply not meeting demand in areas with more users proportionately, etc.
  • In some cases, there is a positive association (e.g., Cote d’Ivoire, Kinshasa, and Niger).
3.1. By education: < vs. >= ever attended secondary school
3.2. By HH wealth: bottom 2 vs. top 3 quintiles
3.3. By residential area: rural vs. urban

4. Latest pattern of MCPR by indicator (only for population-based access)

As expected, based on its inconsistent association with women’s background characteristics, there is no common pattern with MCPR.

MCPR (%) on the Y axis.
* Green bar: MCPR among women without access to the methods.
* Blue bar: MCPR among women with access to the methods.

Pairs to the right side has more strict definitions of access.
* curav: All five methods currently available
* noso: All five methods currently available + no stock out in the past 3 months for any of the five methods
* ready: All five methods currently available + SDP is ready to insert and remove IUD and Implants
* rnoso: All five methods currently available + no stock out in the past 3 months for any of the five methods + SDP is “ready” to insert and remove IUD and Implants


Annex 2. Methods

  • For methods to link survey EAs and SDPs, see here: (https://rpubs.com/YJ_Choi/PMA_EA_SDP_Link)
  • All data come from publicly available PMA surveys. But in Burkina Faso and Niamey, Niger, the latest publicly available surveys have issues in EA-SDP linking that are currently under investigation. Thus, Burkina Faso Round 6 and Niamey Round 5 are excluded.
  • India and Nigeria are also excluded, to further investigate EA-SDP link.

See GitHub for data, code (for both Stata and R), and more information.
For typos, errors, and questions, contact me at yj.choi@isquared.global.

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